Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur) (15 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)
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It was then that she remembered what had made the stain on the hem of her skirt—the stain that the rat had gnawed a hole in. It was from the last of the wine in the cup she had kicked over. Norbert had drunk most of the contents of the cup. Norbert was dead and so was the rat. Mondete had been sleeping in the hostel that night.
“By the fatal bear bite of Saint Euphemia!” Catherine muttered as she gathered up her laundry. “Why does it always come back to Mondete?”
 
Hubert wasn’t pleased to find Edgar alone, gawking at the stoneworkers at the church.
“Where’s my daughter?” he asked without further greeting.
“Shopping,” Edgar said without moving. “Watch out!” he cried suddenly.
Hubert looked at the church. A basket of building bricks was swinging wildly halfway up the wall as the man in charge of the hoisting crane at the top struggled to replace the rope that had slipped out of the groove. They watched the workers scatter from beneath as the basket reversed and bricks came flying down.
Edgar exhaled in relief. “Someone could have been killed,” he said. “There has to be a safer way to do that.”
Hubert regarded his son-in-law with skepticism. “Such as?”
“A net over the bricks, with weights at the corners to keep the basket from tilting and to make it harder for the bricks to fall out,” Edgar answered promptly.
Hubert had to admit that there was some merit in this idea.
He also knew what the master mason would say if some idle watcher were to come up and suggest it.
“I think we should find Catherine,” was his only comment. “You’ve entertained yourself enough for the day.”
Edgar followed sadly. He knew there was no way he could ever please his father-in-law. He had been trained for nothing Hubert could approve of. Once he had rashly promised to go to Mohtpellier to study law, in the hope that this skill would be useful to a merchant. Hubert hadn’t mentioned it again and Edgar didn’t want to remind him. But he wondered if that might not be the only way to earn some respect from the family he had married into.
They met Catherine as she came up from the river. Her feet were still bare and now bright red from the chafing of the water. Her head was uncovered, her dark braids coming undone. She clutched a damp wad of clothes in her arms and her teeth were chattering, more with excitement than with cold. Hubert turned to Edgar.
“Look at her! This is what happens when you go off and leave her on her own!” he shouted. “Can’t you take better care of her than this?”
Catherine was so angry that she dropped the laundry. “Father, don’t talk to him that way!” she shouted back. “I’m not a baby who needs a nurse. I’m a married woman and I can care for myself.”
Edgar said nothing. Glaring now at his daughter, Hubert didn’t notice, but Catherine knew the silence meant that her husband was angry. Edgar compressed his lips like that only to keep fury from exploding. She would rather he let it out, shouting like her father did. Then she would know if he were furious with Hubert for berating him in public or with her for thinking he couldn’t defend himself.
She bent over to pick up the stockings and scarf. There were bits of grass and dirt sticking to them now. She shook them out, partly to disguise the fact that she was shaking as well.
Without speaking, Edgar took Catherine’s elbow and led her roughly away. Hubert didn’t move. Watching them go, he
had an unsettling sense that he had just done something that would take a long time to repair.
 
Catherine waited until Edgar’s jaw unclenched and he began to breathe normally again. Then she shook free from his hand. He seemed surprised that he had still been holding her arm. He took a deep breath.
“I suppose I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said.
That was the last thing Catherine expected him to say. “I thought you were going to tell me I had embarrassed you,” she answered.
He glanced sideways at her, trudging next to him with her skirts trailing in the path and the tip of one stocking dangling over her arm. Despite himself, he began to laugh.
Catherine blinked hard several times to keep back tears of relief. His silent anger frightened her more than she dared say. There was no way to counter it. Her own volatile temper was the same as her father’s, a flare and then spent; Edgar’s temper was like ice, growing and hardening throughout a long winter.
He stopped and took her in his arms, squeezing the laundry between them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She wasn’t sure for what. “You’re getting wet,” she answered.
He moved away slightly, then hugged her again. “I don’t mind,” he said.
Catherine turned her face up to him. He kissed her nose. She smiled.
Summer was coming. Even on the moutains, the winter ice was melting.
 
The next morning they set out once again. This time when Catherine looked around, she noticed new faces among the pilgrims.
“Are there people from Figeac also going to Compostela?” she asked Maruxa, who was walking beside her.
“No, but there’s a party from Burgundy that has just returned from a side trip to pray at Rocamadour,” the jongleuse answered. “They petitioned the abbot to let them join us.”
“That will be good,” Catherine said. “We’ll have more protection from bandits now.”
“Roberto and I are always glad of a new audience,” Maruxa added.
“Did those monks come back to ask anything more about the death of Hugh of Grignon?” Catherine asked.
“No.” Maruxa’s voice became wary. “Why should they? Everyone knows it was the
ribaux
. One of them told me that they only questioned us because Abbot Peter didn’t want any of Hugh’s family to say the matter had been dealt with too lightly.”
“I see,” Catherine said.
Maruxa seemed disinclined to further conversation. She moved away from Catherine and fell back to walk again with her husband.
So there would be no more questions about Hugh’s murder. And no one had thought to wonder about the death of Norbert. Catherine knew she could keep silent; she had said nothing to anyone but Edgar so far. She wasn’t sure if she would have the courage to stand up before Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, and tell him that she thought she might have overheard a man being murdered while she was crouching behind a bush emptying her bladder. The tale of the rat seemed even less likely to be believed, although not as embarrassing to relate. And even if Mondete had had a reason to kill Norbert, why would she also murder Hugh?
Catherine walked more slowly as she pondered these things, falling behind Edgar and Solomon, who were involved in a discussion of their own as they led the horses. Suddenly she realized that she was walking next to the wrong horse. She looked up and found Lady Griselle’s maid staring down at her in amusement.
Catherine was glad she had decided to wear the new scarf, even though yellow and red were not exactly appropriate colors for a pilgrim. It drew attention from the increasingly bedraggled state of her second-best
bliaut
, which hadn’t been cleaned since she left Paris.
“I’ve been watching you,” the woman greeted her.
Catherine started guiltily, even though she couldn’t think of anything horrible she’d done recently.
“You must find traveling very tedious,” she replied, “if you find me of interest to watch.”
The maid laughed. “I do indeed find it tedious, but no more so than staying at home. That’s why I’m grateful to your father for entertaining my Lady Griselle and thus allowing me a morning to myself.”
Catherine looked at the riders ahead of them. Yes, Griselle was keeping pace with her father, while Eliazar had moved ahead. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but suddenly Hubert laughed. The sound was oddly disquieting. Catherine hadn’t heard him laugh like that since before she had gone to the convent. It had been so long ago that she had forgotten what he looked like when happy.
“Don’t look so worried,” the maid said. “I can assure you that Griselle has no intention of seeking a replacement for her dead lord.”
“Of course not,” Catherine answered. “That hadn’t even occurred to me. And my mother isn’t dead. She’s … ill, and has retired to the convent of Tart. The sisters care for her very well there.”
“Yes, I had heard something of that,” said the woman. “Do you then manage your father’s household?”
Catherine thought about this. She supposed she did, what little of it was managed. Since her mother left, Hubert rarely had anyone in to dine with them. Many nights were spent at the home of Eliazar and Johannah. She and Edgar were so absorbed in each other and their problems that she hadn’t noticed her father’s growing melancholia.
She sighed. “Not as well as I should,” she admitted. “But we live in Paris and don’t have the responsibilities that the mistress of a castellany would have. My name is Catherine,” she added.
“Yes, I know,” the maid said.
Catherine waited.
“My name, I’m afraid, is Hersent,” the maid told her.
“Oh,” Catherine said. How embarrassing. She knew the fable; everyone did. Hersent was the name of the she-wolf ignominiously raped by the fox. It was part of a very popular series of tales. What had the woman’s mother been thinking of? “I’m very pleased to meet you,” Catherine added. “Are you also traveling as a pilgrim?”
“Not really,” Hersent answered. “Like my lady, I owe it to the memory of my husband. But if any grace is added to my soul because of my patient endurance of the journey, I will not be ungrateful to Our Lord.”
Catherine shaded her eyes to look up at Hersent. She saw a woman about fifteen years older than herself, perhaps thirty-five or so. She had rich blond hair and light brown eyes. Her lips were thin, as was the bridge of her nose. This made her seem more disapproving than her behavior with Catherine indicated. Cautiously, Catherine decided that she might like this woman.
“How long have you served Lady Griselle?” she asked.
“Only since her husband died,” Hersent told her. “Before that, I had my own home, small though it was. But my husband was killed in the same battle as hers, and our eldest son married and wanted our house. So Griselle took me in.”
“I didn’t learn where this battle was,” Catherine said. “Were they fighting in the Holy Land?”
“Hardly,” Hersent said. “Although Queen Eleanor seems to think it is. No, they were good vassals, helping King Louis and his wife keep her patrimony in Aquitaine. Last summer’s campaign. So far as I know, no one has made a song about it. I don’t even know if it was successful. Only that I got no reward from it.”
“So you are also going to Compostela for the sake of your husband’s soul,” Catherine said.
Hersent smiled. “Not really,” she said. “Oh, I say a few prayers for him. He wasn’t such a bad husband, as they go. No, it’s Griselle who truly grieves. I believe she means to enter a convent upon our return. Don’t be deceived by her attire. She weeps for him every night.”
“Will you go to the convent with her?” Catherine asked.
“I don’t think so,” Hersent answered. “I’ve made other plans.”
Catherine started to ask what they were, but Hersent interrupted.
“I am being signaled to attend,” she said and urged her horse forward through the line to where Lady Griselle was beckoning her.
As she left, Catherine realized that they had fallen to the end of the procession. Only Mondete was behind her.
The day was mild and calm. There was a perfume in the air from some flower she didn’t recognize. The road was soft, the hills bright with the first green of the year.
Leaving Mondete to her thoughts, Catherine hurried into the wake Hersent had left and a moment later caught up with Edgar and Solomon, who were still arguing. She put her arm around her husband’s waist and tried to adjust to his longer stride. He slowed a bit and absently kissed the side of her head, then returned to his discussion. Someone in the party was singing
Ave Maris Stella
in a fairly good bass.
Perhaps she was wrong and old Norbert had died naturally. Perhaps poor Hugh had been waylaid by bandits, and the lovers she had heard were no one she knew. Catherine wanted to weave a crown of daisies, not to poke into other people’s misery.
This was not a day to think about death.
 
Gaucher watched Hubert riding next to Griselle. He frowned. “Where are her guards?” he muttered. “That’s the sort they should be protecting her from.”
Rufus scratched at a flea bite under his chain mail. The rings cut into his skin. Damn thing chafed enough to drive him mad. Tomorrow he would leave it off, he decided. Then he turned his attention to Hubert and Griselle.
“She’s baiting us, old friend,” he told Gaucher. “You know how women are. When they get bored, they try to set us against each other, then watch the fun.”
Gaucher’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think so?”
“Certain of it,” Rufus said. “Ignore it and she’ll be bored with him, too, soon enough. Look at him. Got a paunch like an innkeeper’s. Probably never lifted a sword in his life. What would she want with a man like that?”

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